Some people claim they have green thumbs and use no Miracle-Gro to make gardens so bountiful that the veggies fall from the vine and march right into the kitchen.

My gardens are noteworthy because if planted on coal-black soil there would be a desert in three weeks and the oasis would have run dry.

Some people have green thumbs, others a variant of green, some tend to be tan, but my thumb is unique because it is BLACK, and just not regular black but GLOSS black. I used to plant a garden every year and I tried everything.

Once I used nothing but horse manure and I was told my garden was too "hot" and I didn’t have Goldilocks to find out when it was "just right." My horse manure garden must have been too hot for veggies but it was a haven for weeds. My Quack Grass roots were so white and so long that you could weave them together and sell them for rope.

Hot, cold, too rich, too poor _ I was never in tune with the ground. I bet when I die there will be a 6-foot-by-2-foot plot of dirt in a lush green valley at Sleepy Lawn Cemetery that will be devoid of all plant life and it will have my headstone on it _ it will save you a lot of time finding me for the guided tours.

You don’t become a garden maniac all by yourself _ you must be carefully nurtured. My father planted a garden every year. He had noble intentions, a strong back but a weak mind because as the gardens got larger the yield drastically dropped around August. In August it got too warm to hoe rows, and as soon as the weeds heard this small block parties started all over the garden. It always started with the pole beans because they could see everything. As soon as things started slacking off they would shout the news to the rest, and try as they did to fight off the weed invasion, they were doomed to fail.

In two weeks, the garden turned into an impenetrable jungle. One October in the dead center of the garden we found the skeleton of a Belgian tiger that must have gotten lost and perished.

Then there was the year of the rutabagas. My father got a sack of rutabaga seeds as a door prize at some auction. My father decided that although he knew nothing about rutabagas he thought he could sell them to people in the surrounding communities. I think he pictured himself as a "Johnny Appleseed," only he was "Freddie the Rutabaga man."

That spring we looked for the ideal spot to plant rutabagas. Mother wanted them down near the house in case rutabagas bloomed; she would see and smell the rutabagas.

We planted them in the lower orchard. We plowed, we dragged and when we were finished had a piece of ground 25 yards by 18 yards wide. The soil throbbed with energy and there we stood with our bag of rutabaga seed without a clue how to plant it. I thought they should be in rows, but my father thought they should be broadcast.

Broadcast won, and my father proceeded to walk down the field spreading seed with an elegant sweep of his hand. He got to the end and still had a lot of seed left over so he came back spreading more seed. (A little heavier this time.) When he got to the end he still had seed left over so we put a row of rutabagas down the rows of grapes in the vineyard. After this we kind of forgot about the rutabagas until we were checking the trees for apples and found ourselves standing on a road that looked like rutabaga cobblestones.

"Look," my father cried, "we have rutabagas." It was the first and only "crop" we had. We pried a couple of rutabagas from the side of the field and were astounded by the deep main root and how tight each rutabaga seemed to cling to each other.

After cooking them, we were served rutabaga salad, rutabaga under glass, rutabaga mashed, rutabaga chunk style, rutabaga puree and rutabaga soup.

For dessert we had rutabaga pie ala mode with rutabaga ice cream. As a final insult to human dignity, rutabagas live up to the last three letters of the name rutabagas _ GAS. We were a very unpopular family for about two weeks.

"Waste not Freddie" gave all of the leftovers to the pigs. They loved it. Dad got out the flame thrower and 55 gallon barrels and stared to make rutabaga stew for the pigs. We had to hand-pry each rutabaga out of that field. Not even the idea of putting the plow behind the Jeep did anything but bounce the plow and Jeep all over the place. It was the fall from hell!

Eventually we harvested and cooked all the rutabagas. The pigs loved it because there were a few weeks when I almost believed "pigs could fly."

That rutaba-gas surely gave them a running start. And 55 pigs can sure generate music for your ears.

To this day I will swear my pork chop tasted a little like rutabaga, but that all becomes part of the story as time goes by.

Henry Geerken is a three-time NYSUT award-winner writing humorous articles addressing retiree and senior citizen concerns. He can be reached by e-mail at

hgeerken@stny.rr.com.